Jeanann Verlee is a poet, essayist, editor, and former punk rocker who collects tattoos and kisses Rottweilers. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellow and the author of three books: prey, first runner-up for the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award (Black Lawrence Press), Said the Manic to the Muse (Write Bloody Publishing) and Racing Hummingbirds, silver medal winner in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (Write Bloody Publishing). She has also been awarded the Third Coast Poetry Prize and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry. Her work is featured in numerous journals, including Academy of American Poets, BuzzFeed, Adroit, Thrush, Muzzle, Rattle, and VIDA, and has been been anthologized in various publications, including Uncommon Core: Contemporary Poems for Learning and Living, The Courage Anthology: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls, and Looking for the Enemy: The Eternal Internal Gender Wars of Our Sisters Anthology. She was first runner-up for the Indiana Review Poetry Prize and has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry.